The Adventure of the Misaligned Monkeys
by Sresla
Summary: There are about 260 known living species of monkey. What specifically has piqued Sherlock Holmes' interest in this pair of primates and will a novelist with an overactive imagination help, or just get in his way?


I rolled my shoulder, sticking a thumb under the strap of my leather satchel and adjusting its familiar weight. I think a backpack distributes a bag's contents better, but it also makes me feel like I'm still in secondary school and a hunchback to boot. So, I spent far too much on something that better fit my private picture of myself: a messenger bag that could hold a laptop but more often aided me in carrying forty or fifty pounds of books back and forth between my flat and the London Library. In twenty years, it might be the bag I take with me to book signings or lectures; as much a part of me as my signature because I'm never seen without it. Like Indiana Jones' fedora. That's how I rationalized the expense, anyway – that the damn thing would have to last me at least that long in order to recoup what I spent on it.

Without my Carlyle Membership, I might spend more of my time at home using the time sink everyone else calls Wikipedia for my research; research my agent, Rabb Tomlinson, felt was pointless anyway.

"No one cares if people in the sixteenth century ate tomatoes, Adrian. If your characters want to eat tomatoes on toast, they damn well can. They're a pair of elves in a made-up fantasyland, for Christ's sake!"

He only said that because he cares. Or cared. Rabb's not my agent any more, although he'll still give me a nod when he sees me. I figure I'll need at least another million or two words under my belt before we'll actually be on speaking terms again.

It wasn't that my book tanked – it didn't. And it wasn't that I didn't have a sequel or two (or three, don't tell Rabb) in me – my computer, the external drive, my Dropbox account and the hard copies in a safe deposit box over on Cheval are proof of that. What I did discover was that I was a little possessive of my boys and wasn't quite ready for them to go from two fellows in my head to two fellows in other peoples' heads. I privately picture them as a pair of twin Scheherazades, whispering their stories to me at night. When my muses get going they do keep me awake, so it's an apt analogy. They talk and I continue filling up disk space.

So now I'm living the life of a sole trader while the EU debates what freelancing is and what my employer might end up owing me for my work. Right now, that'd be about half of nothing as I haven't written anything since my byline six months ago on the Brendon Abbott scandal. No one remembers the name under the article's title. All they remember is Sherlock Holmes.

To be fair, that's mostly what I remember too. Don't get me wrong. If you were to ask me about the case, I'd be able to tell you all the sordid little details. But Sherlock is like a tidal wave: he fills up everything in your field of vision and your decision on how to react to him will determine how battered and bruised you are afterwards.

"Mr. Holmes! Mr. Holmes!"

He was waiting for me when I popped around the corner like a startled hare. I'd caught him on Hanway, just down from the bright red façade of Bradley's Spanish Bar and about ten blocks from his final destination on Rathbone Place. If you can call the graceless thing I do running, I'd intercepted him once I understood he'd declined a car and was walking to the scene of the crime.

My choice was not without repercussions.

"Construction on Gresse Street?" I was too out of breath to do more than nod. "That's… unfortunate." It was. They were new shoes. "I'm flattered. You could have just waited for me at the hotel. Or is it such a slow news day that 'No comment' will still make the front page?"

He'd gotten it right – and wrong. I hadn't been working for anyone at the time, not officially, just following along in the papers like everybody else. Four women turn up dead; in his last press conference Detective Inspector Lestrade intimated there was a pattern. I had a crackpot theory that had the feel of truth to it, all because my ex-boyfriend liked to read celebrity gossip aloud from the Daily Express every morning at the breakfast table over runny eggs and burnt coffee.

He'd paused just long enough for me to catch up with him. Now, hands shoved in his pockets, collar up against the smattering of rain, he resumed walking toward his destination, framed by the narrow street with its closed-up storefronts and a backdrop of overcast, gray London sky.

I had my breath back, but I didn't chase him. "Have you given any consideration to Brendon Abbott?" I called out.

He turned. I could hear the crunchy grind of pebbles against damp cement as he pivoted and looked at me. The difference, well… You'd have to meet him to know for yourself. He'll look at you, take in the whole of who you are and spit you out just as quickly because most people aren't important. Unless he - I even feel like I need to say this with quotes around it - "takes an interest." I'm not used to suddenly becoming someone's entire world and the sharpness of that focus was like a sunbeam refracted through a magnifying glass. It wasn't intentionally sexual but in the spur of the moment, I wasn't clinically impartial. My body responded. I hope I hid it well.

"That may be the least stupid thing I've heard all day."

For once, I was just as clever in real time as I am two hours later with time to think of the perfect response. "Talk to yourself much, then?"

"And to the occasional cheeky journalist."

When story eventually broke, I was on the crest of it.

Then the dust settled and life returned to normal. There's a lot that can be said about normal. Boring, for example. Which was why I forced myself to go to the LL once a week. Otherwise I'd be holed up in my apartment with my cat, computer, Breville tea maker and my imaginary friends.

Today I'd dressed for the occasion: worn jeans and layers under and over a burgundy plaid Levi shirt to ward against the early spring chill. My John Varvatos were a cabbie's splash away from being ruined but they're also most comfortable shoes I've ever owned and I had a long hike home.

The swing of fifty pounds worth of books wasn't much of a balancing act, but I still took the stairs at a slow, careful pace as I left the building. I was paying more attention to my feet than what was in front of me which was why I was startled to a standstill when I looked up and saw Sherlock Holmes bounding up the steps.

He was wearing the same coat, but a different muffler, its brightness a contrast against his monochromatic garb. His head was bowed, his brows knit together, as intent on the ground as I had been, taking the steps two at a time with his long stride. We were within ten seconds of passing one another, unawares.

I hadn't realized I'd stopped walking; the collision from behind almost drove me face first onto the concrete. My grip on the metal handrail kept me upright although my hand slid along its length. I felt the cheap paint chip and crumble, its sharp latex edges scraping my palm. I must have made a noise as I began to fall - probably a curse - because Sherlock's curly head shot up and his pale eyes met mine. "Hello Adrian."

Self-conscious over the almost-accident I'd caused, I ignored him and turned to confront the person behind me, with the righteous indignation of an obviously guilty man. I came face-to-face with a living embodiment of Lydia.

Lydia requires context, although if I'd said the same thing in 1989, you'd know instantly what I meant. The girl I was looking down at was the spitting image of Lydia Deetz, the gothy teenager from the Beetlejuice cartoon. She was short; thick purple and pink eye shadow pancaked her eyelids and she wore a red batwing cape. It can't have been intentional; there weren't enough cosplay elements involved to make the outfit genuine. Her hair was all wrong, for one: long and dark shot through purple highlights, the same color echoed in the make-up trowelled on her pale skin. She also wore metal-tipped boots that looked so heavy I wondered how, as slight as she was, she managed to lift her feet.

A scowl twisted her face. She pushed past me. "Berk."

"Wait... Hey! What's your name?" '_Please be Lydia, please be Lydia._' She answered me with her middle finger and kept walking. Her boots clinked against the pavement like impractical silver horseshoes. Irrationally, I was irritated. I'd never know if her name _was_ Lydia and a stupid thing like that would end up plaguing me right before I fell asleep until finally five hours later… or I'd die of an aneurysm. '_It's another horse in college all over again. Damn you, Lewis Black._'

I couldn't help looking back and, of course, Sherlock was still standing there. He was on the landing and while I would have sworn a moment ago whatever drove him was a matter of some urgency, he'd stopped now and stood with the suppressed tension of a coiled spring. His unconventional look – striking rather than traditionally handsome because his face was all sharp cheekbones and chin – drew my gaze like a lodestone. He also drew my ire. Who was Sherlock Holmes anyway, to stand there and deconstruct me? He'd done it before. To me and to people we'd met in the course of our investigation. And now there he was, breaking me down into little pieces and judging my life by my book bag, my name brand shoes and off-price shirt from TJ's. I'd _tell_ him I had a cat, if he had a genuine interest in knowing. I could hear his voice in my head:

'_A grey and white shorthair that you talk to, even though know it can't understand the words. A stray you indulge at the cost of your own necessities, because it adopted you rather than the other way round and you feel obligated to prove to it that it hasn't made the wrong choice and leave. So you have abandonment issues. It stems from your father who either left your mother before you were born or when you were a baby. And she never let you forget you were the reason he left. It's manifested itself in a string of superficial relationships that were neither mentally or physically satisfying, but that you felt compelled to see to their bitter end. You've never had an amicable break-up which is why you prefer not to date and bury yourself in building the perfect, fictional relationship in your books._'

I glowered; Sherlock mirrored my expression with a frown of his own.

It wasn't until he started back down the stairs that it dawned on me that he wasn't caught up analyzing my faults and foibles. He'd been waiting for me to follow him. He backtracked until he stood on the step above mine; Sherlock's concession to my not moving fast enough to suit him, although he hadn't beckoned or done anything besides say hello to me.

I wasn't doing what he'd expected.

I'd made Sherlock Holmes curious.

About me.

We stared at one another until I was compelled to look away. "Miserable day." I feigned scanning the skies, which were still cloudy and threatening that worse was yet to come. It wasn't an apology, but it was the best I could manage. The wind pushed a mix of tobacco, formaldehyde, wool and Earl Grey at me. I pegged him for Clippers. Not because of any desire to reward fair trade with his business, but because it usually sat about eye level at in the shops. I was a loose leaf snob myself. I probably reeked of jasmine green. I drink so much of it, I must sweat weak tea.

"Mmm." It wasn't agreement, just a sound that forced me to look back at him. When he was certain he'd captured my full attention, he said, "How much do you know about simian skull structure?"

Absurdly, my mind went to the scene in _Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom_, where Kate Capshaw's character was presented with chilled monkey brains. I smothered a laugh. "Less than Sherlock Holmes."

The corner of his mouth curved up, eyes alight with manic energy. "What most people don't realize is, that's always the right answer."

* * *

There's very little that I can say about this story except that I dreamt it and I wanted to write it all down when I woke up. I place it sometime after John married Mary, has moved away and Sherlock is, in his own way, looking for someone to take Watson's place. Enter Adrian, the novelist-cum-journalist. He can't bring what Watson brought to the table, but he's got a passion for esoteric knowledge and reading which was why Sherlock posed the last question to him in the first place. Adrian would be the fellow who actually read Sherlock's web page rather than John's - at least initially - because he genuinely needed to know something about tobacco ash. And he's a good listener.

I don't know where, if anywhere, this might lead. I haven't hashed out a plot beyond something very basic and to be honest, I don't know if I can do the title justice. Because my true passion is elsewhere (Dragon Age: Origins), I make no promises that it will ever be finished but am leaving it open for additional chapters because, well, monkeys. I also never write in first person. It's difficult for me. But I suppose it's good sometimes to step out of the comfort zone. Unless it's terrible and then *zip* back into the comfort zone. Always have a fallback.

Benedict Cumberbatch's version of Sherlock belongs to the BBC and of course the man himself to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Adrian is my own creation. I have no idea what other disclaimers I should put in here besides if this gets a little steamy at any point in the future, it can't be helped. Could anyone blame Adrian for his attraction? I know I'd kiss Benedict if the opportunity arose. For science. Or research. Research on the science of kissing. Yep.


End file.
